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Texans will have an opportunity to revisit a question that should haunt anyone who believes in the integrity of our criminal justice system: Did our state execute an innocent man?
The new film “Trial by Fire” tells the true story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was sentenced to death for setting a fire to his home in Corsicana that killed his three young daughters in 1991. The film is based on an investigative story by David Grann that appeared in the New Yorker in 2009, five years after Willingham was executed over his vociferous protestations of innocence.
In my experience of serving 8 years on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and 4 years as a state district judge in Travis County, the Willingham case stands out to me for many of the same reasons it stood out to filmmaker Edward Zwick, who calls it a veritable catalogue of everything that’s wrong with the criminal justice system and, especially, the death penalty. False testimony, junk science, a jailhouse informant, and ineffe…

Tennessee Governor Denies Clemency for Don Johnson

Johnson will be executed by lethal injection on Thursday, May 16, 2019

Gov. Bill Lee has denied Don Johnson’s request for clemency, and will not intervene to stop Johnson’s execution on Thursday.

“After a prayerful and deliberate consideration of Don Johnson‘s request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and will not be intervening," Lee said in a written statement.

Johnson was convicted in 1985 for the murder of his wife, Connie Johnson. But Connie's daughter, Cynthia Vaughn, is now pleading for the governor to grant him clemency. The two reconciled in 2012. Johnson's request for clemency focused on his Christian faith and what his lawyers call a "remarkable transformation" over the course of more than 30 years in prison. He was baptized on death row and ordained as an elder in the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Johnson's supporters have been appealing to the governor on the basis of his own Christian faith, which was a prominent part of his gubernatorial campaign last year.

Johnson will die by a three-drug lethal injection protocol that has been at the center of a legal battle for more than a year. Leading anesthesiologist Dr. David Lubarsky said last year that, based on witness accounts, he concluded “to a reasonable degree of medical certainty” that Billy Ray Irick experienced “torturous” pain when he was killed using the three-drug protocol in August. Lubarsky said that Irick was “aware and sensate during his execution and would have experienced the feeling of choking, drowning in his own fluids, suffocating, being buried alive, and the burning sensation caused by the injection of the potassium chloride.”

Rev. Charles Fels, one of the attorneys representing Johnson, released a statement on behalf of the clemency team:

Don Johnson has shown he is a person who is deserving of mercy. Although we appreciate Governor Lee and his staff for carefully considering our application for clemency for Don, we, along with thousands of Christians in Tennessee and around the world, are deeply saddened by today’s decision. Also disappointed are thousands of citizens who had hoped that Governor Lee would use his unique constitutional clemency power to consider matters that no court could, including moral transformation, forgiveness, and the entire positive arc of Don’s life after 1984.

We respect the Governor’s decision, and Don accepts it as God’s will.

Don is at peace and accepts the call to a new life in Christ. He prays for the Governor, the Warden and his staff, Connie, Cynthia and Jason and for all those who he has injured in the past. Don gives thanks to the many Christian friends who have supported him for many decades. He gives particular thanks to the pastors and people of Riverside Chapel Seventh-day Adventist Church who ordained, supported and loved him in his journey, and to the Dysinger family who have been with him in song and in prayer for the past 15 years. Don’s faith is strong, and he knows where his journey leads.

Johnson answered questions from the Scene earlier this month.

"I am too blessed to be stressed," he said when asked how we was feeling as his execution date approached. "I take each day one day at a time. I am at peace. I have surrendered to Him. My routine is a little busier, because of more attorney visits, but otherwise it is the same as it has been for years. I still start each morning in prayer and every day I set time aside for Bible study."

He said he is not afraid of his execution.

"I place my life in the Lord’s hands. I accept whatever he allows to happen."

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

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New Hampshire has debated repeal of the death penalty since Gov. Badger called for its abolition in 1834. This year, if House and Senate vote tallies hold during upcoming override votes, repeal will become a reality.
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Death penalty repeal has passed the Legislature three times, in 2000, 2018 and 2019, only to fall to the respective veto pens of Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and Gov. Sununu, so if repealing the death penalty is important to you, now is the time to reach out to your state representatives and senators.
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A British gran who faces being shot for drug smuggling now just wants to die, according to a notorious killer she befriended in jail.
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Mack said Sandiford – who she claimed developed “maternal ­feelings” for her inside Bali’s Kerobokan Prison – has become more and more reclusive.
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A serial killer who terrorized Florida with a 1984 spree that claimed the lives of 10 women was put to death Thursday, his execution witnessed by the woman who survived one of his attacks and aided in his capture.
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Mataram (Indonesia) (AFP) -- An Indonesian court sentenced Frenchman Félix Dorfin to death for drug smuggling on Monday, in a shock verdict after prosecutors asked for a 20-year jail term.
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SINGAPORE — The Court of Appeal on Thursday (May 23) granted an eleventh-hour appeal by Pannir Selvam Pranthaman for a stay of his execution. He was supposed to be hanged in Changi Prison on Friday morning.
The 31-year-old Malaysian was convicted in 2017 of trafficking 51.84g of diamorphine, also known as heroin, into Singapore through Woodlands Checkpoint in September 2014.
Pannir, who was not represented by lawyers before Thursday, had filed the application for the stay of execution himself on Wednesday.
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This left him with little time to get legal advice on his options, and he should be given the chance to do so, they said.
Pannir’s lawyers, Mr Too Xing Ji and Mr Lee Ji En from BMS Law LLC, stepped in only a few hours before the Court of A…

Texans will have an opportunity to revisit a question that should haunt anyone who believes in the integrity of our criminal justice system: Did our state execute an innocent man?
The new film “Trial by Fire” tells the true story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was sentenced to death for setting a fire to his home in Corsicana that killed his three young daughters in 1991. The film is based on an investigative story by David Grann that appeared in the New Yorker in 2009, five years after Willingham was executed over his vociferous protestations of innocence.
In my experience of serving 8 years on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and 4 years as a state district judge in Travis County, the Willingham case stands out to me for many of the same reasons it stood out to filmmaker Edward Zwick, who calls it a veritable catalogue of everything that’s wrong with the criminal justice system and, especially, the death penalty. False testimony, junk science, a jailhouse informant, and ineffe…

OSAKA -- The death sentence has been finalized for a 49-year-old man convicted of the 2015 murder of two junior high school students in western Japan after he withdrew his appeal, a court said Tuesday.
Koji Yamada retracted the appeal on May 18, according to the Osaka High Court.
During the first hearing of his trial at the Osaka District Court in November 2018, Yamada denied intending to kill Natsumi Hirata, 13, and pleaded not guilty over the death of 12-year-old Ryoto Hoshino, insisting he had died of an illness.
The district court sentenced him to death on Dec. 19, saying Yamada suffocated the two around Aug 13, 2015, in Osaka Prefecture or its vicinity.
It is unclear why Yamada retracted the appeal.
He said in an interview with Kyodo News last December after the ruling was handed down that he had not expected to be subject to capital punishment.
"I'm shocked because I wasn't ready for the death penalty," Yamada said.
He also said in another interview in March …

It is “not tenable” for Singapore to go easy on Malaysian drug offenders who are caught on the Singapore side of the causeway, the island's Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam, said today.
Speaking at the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) Workplan seminar, he noted the case of Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, the Malaysian who was granted a stay of execution yesterday by the Court of Appeal, saying he was accorded full due process at every stage.
The 31-year-old was convicted of trafficking 51.84g of heroin at Woodlands Checkpoint in September 2014.
"You bring in 51, 52 grams of pure heroin, it is equal to over 4,000 straws of heroin, and [it] feeds hundreds for a week. A person like that is a dealer in death, no two ways about it,” Shanmugam said, but did not go into specific details as the case is before the courts.
He pointed out that a majority of Singaporeans supported a tough anti-drug stance, including the use of the death penalty against drug traffickers.
Last week, the …

DPN opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally, regardless of the method chosen to kill the condemned prisoner. The death penalty is inherently cruel and degrading, an archaic punishment that is incompatible with human dignity. To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values. The death penalty not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms.The death penalty has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect. It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way on grounds of race and class. It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation. It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim's family and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner. It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. Death Penalty News is a privately owned, non-profit organization. It is based in Paris, France.Your donations to Death Penalty News DO make a difference.